Here is is.

Another Day.

One Day.

One among the unknown number alloted to you.

Bless the light.

Another sacred day.

Yours to do with what you will.

This Day won’t, can’t come again – though you may remember it for every Day you have left to live.

Bless the Light.

Today is all we have and whatever happens today you have the absolute existential freedom to choose how you act, how your react, to whatever this Day brings.

Bless the light.

And, when you come to the end of this Day you will have much to give thanks for – not least that the lightning bolt of death has stayed sheathed in the heavens.

Give thanks for the day that is done and pray that tomorrow will dawn for you and gift you one more sacred day.

Bless the light.

And, as you walk through the world of your alloted days you will find that the steps of others will from time to time fall in step with yours.

If you are very fortunate you will find that another’s steps will match yours for mile after mile after mile and that if you lose your footing and fall behind they will stay their steps until you catch up.

Thank you for the Days.

I won’t forget a single day believe me.

Bless the light.

There will be guides and spirits along the way who will befriend and show you t e way before going their own way.

On this road of Days you will find that those who once walked so companionably by your side now seem to marched ahead or taken another turn to take them out of sight.

Yet, as you come to give thanks for another Day of your alloted number you can give thanks for the miles you shared and wish them well wherever they are on the highway of their own Days.

The night is dark and sorrow comes to us all so give thanks for the Days you shared.

Thank you for the Days.

Those sacred days.

Bless the light.

Don’t forget a single Day.

A single Day.

 

Another bitter sweet classic from the pen of Ray Davies brought to vivid, shimmering life by The Kinks.

One of the hallmarks of Ray’s greatness as a songwriter is the ability to tell stories distilling complex emotions we all share into endlessly satisfying three minute vignettes which are faithful both the joy and the sadness in our lives.

Ray has acknowledged that a songwriter is frequently, at the time a song is created, unaware of the effect it will have on its audience :

‘The song has grown in intensity over the years … you don’t think about it, but it’s built up quite a mystique over the years. It certainly left me. It belongs to the world now.’

That’ll do for me as the definition of a great song!

The beauty of the lyric, tenderly evocative but unspecific, is that will be apposite for so many of us in so many times and stations of our lives.

Recollection of those sacred days will always as the days pass have elements of regret.

Loss and sorrow are not to be feared in this world – they come with the territory.

The song starts as an almost busked folk song before building to a tremendous crescendo    as the piano, drums and harmony vocals take the song deep into our hearts.

And, as we will see below, it’s a song that can even surprise its author with its keening power.

In 2010 Ray Davies played the Glastonbury Festival just after the death of Pete Quaife, the Bass player in the original Kinks lineup.

Pete Quaife had quit The Kinks just after ‘Days’ was recorded so playing the song must have had particular resonance for Ray as he looked out on the thronged audience (each of whom will have had their own days to remember and bless as they sang along).

Bless the light.

Thank you for the Days.

Those sacred Days.